Acoustical Modeling of Gunshots Including Directional Information and Reflections

Audio recordings of gunshots exhibit acoustical properties that depend upon the geometry and acoustical characteristics of nearby reflecting surfaces and the relative orientation of the firearm with respect to the recording microphone. Prior empirical studies have demonstrated the basic principles of gunshot recordings near the firearm and near the target. This paper describes an experiment to model the directional characteristics and reflections of several firearm types for a set of test configurations. The results show that reflections and reverberation can be a significant portion of the total acoustic energy received at the microphone.